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Should you wonder anything about this site, this page should answer your questions. Technical problems, browser settings, making of the site, bug report, conceptual choices, you should find what you're looking for in this list : Of course, since this section is a FAQ, as soon as other, well, frequently asked questions happen, I'll add them to the list above. For this to happen, please do not hesitate to mail me so that this FAQ stays alive ! Also, the site is now updated again ! To know what is added right after I upload it, please submit your e-mail address in the box belox and click the bomb (if in the next page the bomb doesn't catch fire, you made a mistake with your e-mail). |
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What is the lastest added content, when was it added ? |  |
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The site is getting updates again since September 2008. The previous updates were around early 2006, where the site was made compatible with Firefox and many scenes have been improved in many areas thanks to better Flash capabilities. Here is a complete list of the new changes, from newest to oldest : - More stuff at the Palmer house : you can now watch closely a framed picture on the table on the left (with the napkin), the vinyl disc player you could click on on the right is more obvious (it now has a disc on), and mostly, it can play (it's random) : o The music when Leland dances with Laura's picture - A new Twin Peaks part has been added : Ghostwood from the last episode, where you look for Cooper and the gate to the Black Lodge. You'll meet Sheriff Truman there, and maybe Andy (with dialogue), with music from the last episode. I'm not entirely happy with it and this will be updated later. - More to see and do in Dorothy Vallens's Apartment : more random elements, and mostly, there can be up to two "people" in the room (if you don't see anybody, same as above, refresh or go back one page to get back in the hall then back in again to randomize the thing). Also, a surprise can await you in the closet (or not). - There's now sound in the X scene in Eraserhead (climb the stairs on the right to go to the Xs) . - More things to see and do in Henry's room. You can now take a look at the picture above Henry's bed, and if you play too much with the lamp on the left with the switch, the bulb can blow up (it doesn't work if the baby is sick and under his boiling thing, get out of the room and back again to reset that random element).
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What is the point of this site ? |  |
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The goal of this site is to build a virtual persistent world out of several different creations by David Lynch that share some very strong elements. Indeed, there are in the films I've chosen to include in this site, characters, stories, places, and a general mood that, I feel, belong to the same consistency. The idea is then to recreate this specific world from which David Lynch takes his visions and ideas, and enable you to visit it. In that aspect, this site was greatly inspired by the similarities between the HTML link structure and the popular interactive books of the 1980s, the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. Unlike in those books or in an adventure video game, however, there is no real purpose in your wandering. The pleasure of experiencing a virtual immersion into David Lynch's world, admiring his visual compositions, his special dream-like atmosphere, his strange or moving characters, is the key to understand this site.
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Do you update often ? It looks like things often change a bit ? | |
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This is a very important feature of this site : in the virtual Lynch tour, some image elements, events or dialogues evolve (or don't) each time you pay a visit to any part of the site. This works automatically, and isn't an update. This was done for both entertainment (it makes the visit more interesting and fun), and for deeper, conceptual reasons : the way Lynch's world works. Lynch likes to play with the frontier that exists (or doesn't, in the case of "Lost Highway") between the inner and the outer world, between the perception of reality and reality itself. So, facts can be told in his films several times, but in a subtly, or radically, different way (for example : the difference between hope and reality is the whole point of "Mulholland Drive"). The quite amazing example of this is, of course, "Lost Highway" : reality is reinvented all the time, the same dialogue goes from one character to another, everybody has at least two identities, the main character swaps from one body to another, time loops happen, and generally, delusion is embodied into reality.
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Do some sequences use behind the scene images ? | |
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Yes, but very few do. I sometimes used cut scene footage or stills generally included in DVD bonuses, but this is it. On the other hand, there is indeed a lot of shots in the site that don't really exist in the movies they're taken from, thanks to Photoshop and hard, intensive image manipulation. To put it shortly, the graphic work I've done to make this site is probably a lot heavier than one may think. For example, in almost every screen capture I did, I had to digitally remove characters that were in the shot - indeed, even in a Lynch movie, there are seldom scenes without people in it. Then, especially for panoramic images in some HTML sequences, there has been a great deal of cutting and pasting with a lot of digital work so that you wouldn't see distortion. Good examples of this are Dorothy Vallens' apartment (from "Blue Velvet") and Henry Spencer's one (from "Eraserhead") : in those sequences, the HTML page shows the entire room in one image - something that didn't appear in the films the scenes are taken from. Some other cases can give you the impression I had access to never seen before footage : some animation (like Philip Jeffries moving in the FBI hall in "Fire Walk with Me" or the Mystery Man taking out his camera in "Lost Highway") were modified and included in a larger scene (Cooper watching a surveillance screen in the first case, the Mystery Man cabin in the second one). Add to this characters taken from one scene to be put in another (like Teresa Banks put in the "Fire Walk with Me" night club), and you should now realize most images are fake !
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What are the best general conditions to browse your site ? | |
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Since 2006, this site is compatible with every popular browser : Internet Explorer for Windows, Firefox, old versions of Netscape. It should also work under Mozilla and other browsers. As far as I know, it doesn't work under Opera. This site uses sound, coded as MP3 through Flash - it has to be installed so the site works, and you really shouldn't switch the sound off while you browse this site. I've captured a lot of music and sounds from Lynch's work (and used a lot of others) to keep that typical Lynch atmosphere as intact as possible, and myself, I've even connected my PC with my stereo. I assure you this greatly improves the impact of some scenes ! You should use the latest versions of your browser and Flash. I work from those and make sure the latest versions work, so if you experience bugs, maybe this is the reason. I also advise you not to let other browser windows opened while browsing this site, otherwise some Flash animations may get slower. Finally, it's of course better if you have a broadband Internet access (I've been careful to limit file weight, though), and you really should activate Internet Explorer's full screen mode (F11) so that immersion into David Lynch's universe is complete.
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In some sections (like "Eraserhead"), graphics look 'dirty' ?! | |
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This is most likely a colour depth problem : if you don't have enough colours to display images, slight tone differences are replaced by one unique colour - and with JPEG compression, this displays 'dirty' square areas, especially in sequences with low contrast like "Eraserhead", or any night scene. To fix this, just set colour depth to 32bits by right-clicking on your desktop (if you use Windows, of course), and then by using the colour depth list under the Parameters tab. If you still have the problem, your browser itself may limit colour depth : check your browser display options to make sure this isn't the case.
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Where have you found this wobbling, handmade-like font ? | |
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Actually, it doesn't just look handmade, it *is* handmade ! Back to something like 1998, a David Lynch painting exhibition took place in Paris, while I happened to be in the city (I didn't live in Paris back then). My father, who knew how interested I was in Lynch, told me about it on the phone, so I called a few friends and rushed to take a look at it. I don't know if you've ever seen Lynch's paintings, but I can tell you digital copies you can see on the Internet don't do them justice. You have to be there, in front of them, to really appreciate how outright disturbing they are. They look like dead, aborted animals, like something that was created to live but couldn't because it was too weird - a bit like a Frankenstein monster - and their corpses are displayed in front of you. But what actually stroke me was the writing. Lynch likes to write the title of his creations on the painting itself, and his handwriting really intrigued me. It looks like a disturbed child's, or some serial killer's who would carve messages on his victims (it actually reminded me of the one from SE7EN's serial killer). So, I have copied this handwriting, using a simple bic pencil, to create the titles you can see in this site. I wrote each title three times, scanned each version, then used an effect to create the letter animation you saw. I later discovered Lynch himself used the same effect in "Dumbland" opening credits.
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There seems to be trouble with some animation ?! | |
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In most cases, animation in this website isn't GIF or Flash animation, but animation using JPEG images and Javascript : JPEG images are preloaded, then displayed by the script at the rate I've coded. This allows web interactivity without the constraint of using vectorial graphics (like with Flash), and with a far better compression and image quality than GIF animation (which, with only 256 colours, are far more appropriate for cartoon than film). So, if animation is choppy, this probably comes from your browser cache configuration : Internet Explorer, in particular, sometimes has the bad habit to reload images that were preloaded, just in case they were updated during the few seconds between loading and display. So, to prevent this in Internet Explorer (check your browser cache settings if you're using another browser) : go to "Tools", under the "General" tab, in the "Temporary Internet Files" section, click on "Settings", and choose "Automatically" for the "newer version of stored pages" checking.
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Sometimes nothing happens and there's no way out ?! | |
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Three possibilities here : check your modem status or the browser status bar to see if everything has been downloaded yet. If the browser is still loading HTML, images or sounds, the navigation may be paused - just wait. The same solution applies if there are dialogues or special events (remember, Lynch likes slow shots, so my site has slow moments as well). Another common situation may be that you just haven't noticed the right way out. Like in an adventure game, try to explore the image and look for something to click on ! In some (very) few places, you may yet be, indeed, at a dead end : just use your "previous page" browser feature once, and you should be able to try another way. And finally, remember that going in circles isn't really being stuck - something *will* eventually happen. The last possibility might be, well, a bug (you know, virtual versions of the crawling "Blue Velvet" ones). In that case, please mail me the address of the bug and your computer configuration (see the "how do I report a bug" question).
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What's the best screen resolution to browse your site ? | |
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That's the beauty (forgive my pretension here) of my site ! Actually, any screen resolution from 800x600 to 1600x1200 pixels should work, because I've designed the HTML so that it fits your browser window no matter what - even with unconventional proportions. I never saw this elsewhere so far. This is something that's quite spectacular to check if you're using Internet Explorer on Windows and you've activated the "Show window contents while dragging" option in the "Effects" tab under the "Display Properties" panel : while changing the size of the window, you'll see the HTML page change and fit accordingly. Walls will expand, furniture and characters will move to fill empty space, and all maintains a consistent visual composition.
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How to get rid of that annoying pop-up image toolbar in IE6 ? | |
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Yes, it *is* annoying, isn't it ? Well, to tell you the truth, I could have put a tag to prevent that menu from appearing, but there are over 300 HTML pages in this site, so it's easier for me that you just set IE6 so that it won't appear again. For this, just go to the "Tools" menu in Internet Explorer, click the "Advanced" tab, and disable the "Enable image toolbar" option under the "Multimedia" section. You will have to restart the browser so that it's correctly set.
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How do I report a bug ? | |
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First, are you sure it's a bug ? Please read the questions in this FAQ related to technical problems before you send me a mail ! Then, I have to know *everything* about your browsing conditions : what operating system runs on your computer ? What Internet browser, and what version of that browser ("Internet Explorer" isn't enough, I have to know if it's, say, version 6.0.2800.1106) ? How fast is your Internet access, what version of Flash do you use, do you have special Internet settings, like an unusual cache configuration ? You must also know that this site just can't work with browsers that do not support Macromedia fscommand and ActionScript. This is the case with most Internet browsers other than Internet Explorer for PC and Netscape, so if you use another browser and are stuck after two pages, reporting it is not relevant : you browser simply does not support the Macromedia plugins. Yet, if it apparently does, and you do see something that shouldn't happen, thank you very much for mailing me !
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Do you have any contact or relation with David Lynch ? | |
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No, I don't know David Lynch, nor any of his friends. As described under the "about me" section of the Site Core, I'm just a web designer who had, at a moments of his life, a lot of time on his hands and a lot of admiration for David Lynch and some of his work. I created this project out of the desire to build a persistent, interactive and consistent web world with some of his creations, which, I believe, have very strong links one with another (namely, "Eraserhead", "Lost Highway", "Blue Velvet", "Twin Peaks", "Fire Walk with Me" and "Mulholland Drive"). I think it's beautiful. If you, on the other hand, do know David Lynch, I'd of course be delighted to know what you or he think about this site ! Please do send me a mail - and expect a quick answer !
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